


darling, take my weight in gold

by wizened_cynic



Series: Dress Your Family in Kevlar and Armani [8]
Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Babies, F/M, Fluff, Pregnancy, Sharks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-15
Updated: 2012-10-15
Packaged: 2017-11-16 10:54:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/538678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wizened_cynic/pseuds/wizened_cynic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emily's not missing anything except a shark necropsy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	darling, take my weight in gold

**Author's Note:**

> In which I fulfill my lifelong dream of writing about a shark necropsy and natural childbirth _in the very same fic_! I don't know. It's gross. Like, actually gross, not just schmoopy, sappy gross. Title from Essex Green.

Emily is thirty-seven weeks and six days pregnant when the team gets called on a case to Hawaii.

"Seriously?" She would yell into the speaker phone if she had the energy, which she doesn't, so it comes out more or less like an indignant grumble. "I've been working on this team for four years and the one time you guys get to go to Hawaii, I'm stuck here in D.C.?"

"You won't be missing anything," Morgan reassures her, but he can't hide the giddiness in his voice.

"Except a shark necropsy," Reid says cheerfully. The Honolulu Police Department found the severed limbs belonging to three different victims in the stomach of a dead shark that had been washed onto a beach, which Emily realizes is the B-plot straight out of an episode of _CSI Miami_ , but still.

_Hawaii._

Emily knows, on a rational level, that her team will most likely end up being just as hot and miserable as she is, but considering her life has been reduced to a series of trips to the bathroom in between being kneed in the ribs by her unborn daughter, it's hard to convince her that she's getting the better end of the deal here.

"I'm sorry," she says, perched on top of the toilet for the --- sixth? seventh? --- time in an hour. Dave is standing outside, waiting for her to be done so that he can help her get back onto her feet, whatever dignity she once had having collapsed like a dying star somewhere around the same time she stopped being able to see her feet. Pregnancy has been a lesson in humility for both of them, and it still surprises her that Dave hasn't run away screaming or faked his own death.

Especially since Emily has seen herself in the mirror. She can only describe herself as _grotesque_.

"What've you got to be sorry for?" he asks. He leans down so she can put her arm around his shoulder and he lugs her up, both of them grunting at the effort. If Emily weren't so tired, she would be mortified at herself, but as it is she just gladly accepts the help and lets him walk her back to the recliner in the den, where the AC is at full-blast but does nothing to stop the room from feeling like a the inside of an oven.

"I'm whining," Emily says with an "oomph", as she settles back down on her side. She's not exactly comfortable, but it doesn't matter. In another four minutes and thirty-seven seconds, she will need Dave to help her up again so she can pee for the eighth time.

"In case you haven't noticed," Dave says, "you're pregnant. You're entitled to whine. In fact, Emily, you're probably the least whiny pregnant woman I've ever known, and believe me, I know pregnant women. One Christmas, every single female relative of mine was pregnant at the same time. There was an unprecedented amount of whining under one roof, I'm telling you."

"You're just saying this because you're afraid I'll sit on you."

"A little bit," he says, lips upturned into a smirk.

"Don't make me laugh," she warns, trying to be as menacing as she can, which is pretty much impossible to do when you're this fat. So she tries something else. "I _will_ pee myself, I swear."

He just raises an eyebrow at her and tells her to take a nap while she can. God knows nobody will be getting any sleep once this kid arrives. Given the way the baby is behaving in utero, Emily has no doubt that her daughter is going to be one high-maintenance diva.

The rest of her team is still on the jet when Emily wakes up two hours late to a twinge in her abdomen and Dave napping on the couch beside her.

"Hey," she says, shaking him by the arm until he opens his eyes grudgingly. "It's time."

 

*

 

It's not.

"False labor," the nurse pronounces, and sends them home.

They get sent home again three days later because Emily falls for it a second time.

At this point they're both convinced that they are not so much having a baby as they are having a twelve-year-old practical joker with a sense of humor which, frankly, neither of them finds the least bit amusing.

"Still no sign of the supercute and impeccably well-dressed offspring of David Rossi and Emily Prentiss?" Garcia asks over Skype.

"Nope," Dave says in a half-hearted attempt to sound cheery. "But we have kungpow chicken from Shanghai Dragon."

The delivery boy has made his appearance and left with enough food for a wedding banquet. Jimmy's a sweet kid working at his uncle's restaurant over the summer before he starts his senior year, so Emily had Dave answer the door, because she didn't want to frighten the poor boy into staying a virgin forever.

"Spicy food is rumored to induce labor," Reid offers helpfully, though Emily notes that he has a tan, so he really should just shut the fuck up, "although it has never been scientifically proven. It is suggested that spicy food creates intestinal activity which encourages uterine contractions. A more effective method would be sexual intercourse, since the hormones of birth and arousal are the same ---"

"Thank you, Reid," Hotch says, in response to Dave's terse " _Make him stop_."

"How was the shark necropsy?" Emily asks, changing the topic entirely through a mouthful of glass noodles, the kind with the peanut sauce which she craved throughout her pregnancy.

"Pretty cool," Reid says blissfully, but before he can go into detail, JJ takes the computer from him.

"Just hang on," JJ says, and the only reason why Emily believes her is that JJ has actually lived through this and Henry is there to show for it. "It'll happen before you know it."

The hot-and-sour soup does nothing except give Emily heartburn, which means she can't even lie down on the recliner anymore. She settles for sitting at the island with her head bent and forehead pressed against the cool granite countertop while Dave patiently rubs her neck and shoulders and the knot of muscle in her lower back that aches like bad poetry.

"If you're up to it," Dave murmurs into her back, his lips pressed against the ridge of her spine, "we could have sex."

Her head weighs about five tons but somehow Emily manages to lift it up and turn it around to stare at Dave like he's just suggested that they sacrifice a goat to the Mayan goddess of fertility, or something equally as ludicrous. "You would still have sex with me? Like this?"

She gestures to herself, her breasts that are sore and heavy with milk, her distended belly with the stretch marks that she knows will never go away in spite of all the cocoa butter in the world, her ankles that are bloated like balloons.

"Emily Prentiss," Dave says, in a tone so condescending that Emily does not know whether to hit him or to kiss him, "I would never not want to have sex with you."

At least he didn't say she was beautiful, or Emily really would have hit him.

 

*

Nothing for two days, and by the time another contraction hits, Emily can't bring herself to be surprised anymore. She is just too tired.

Dave is in his office, reviewing crime scene photos with Hotch and Morgan and giving his input on a preliminary profile. He doesn't want Emily to listen in because he thinks it will affect her mood, even though being nine months pregnant in the middle of the goddamn _summer_ is affecting her mood in ways beyond any UNSUB could.

She hates feeling like this, because she knows she is lucky to have gotten pregnant at all, let alone made it all the way through, and her refusal to complain about things like morning sickness is something that drives her doctor insane. Emily is apparently the only woman in all of history who was actually _relieved_ when she finally started throwing up every hour of the day. She'd read somewhere that the occurrence of morning sickness coincided with a reduced chance of miscarriage.

Another contraction seizes her, a dull pain radiating from the base of her spine and rippling through the rest of her body. The baby shifts lazily, kicking Emily in the ribcage as if to say, _Pay attention._

"I'm not falling for this again," Emily says and she knows her daughter can hear it. Amniotic fluid amplifies sound, which is why neither she nor Rossi want the baby hearing the BAU deliver a profile. This kid is going to be messed up enough as it is, having them as parents.

Sitting down is killing her, so she gets up and walks to where the television is, turning it on. It's one in the morning so there is nothing except the Home Shopping Network and reruns of South Park. She flips the channels some more until she finds an episode of House Hunters, which the baby finds calming and the next contraction doesn't happen until the couple is in the middle of the touring the third house.

 _Fool me once, shame on you,_ she thinks. _Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me a third time, shame on the both of us_.

It's such a mom thing to say, Emily realizes, and then it finally hits her the same time another contraction does --- this time it hurts so much she has to pant through it --- _Oh my god, I'm going to be somebody's mom._

The contraction passes, and everything is still again. The couple chooses the second house, which requires an extra hour of commuting back and forth from work but has space in the basement for a "man cave." Emily mutes the TV during the commercials and she can just barely make out the sound of Dave's voice. He's saying "organized" and "ritualistic" and "history of child abuse" and Emily finds comfort in his words, his calm and collected voice.

When her feet are too tired to stand, she sits backwards in a chair and watches another House Hunters, then a House Hunters International where a family tries to decide which vacation home to purchase in Costa Rica, which does not seem to entertain the baby because the contractions are coming closer and closer together and Emily finds herself wishing they hadn't bailed on those Lamaze classes after only two sessions. JJ had said it didn't matter, she wouldn't remember anything fourteen hours into labor anyway, and Emily rode on that advice.

Obviously Emily knows nothing about giving birth. She still knows how to breathe though, so she focuses on that, pretends she is swimming (in fucking _Hawaii_ ) and blowing bubbles through her mouth.

"Emily?"

She opens her eyes to see Dave crouching over her, wild-eyed and panicked. "Hey," she says. She tries to smile at him, but it comes out more as a grimace.

"We should go to the hospital," he says.

"No," Emily says. She nods to the TV. "We have time. Let's finish this episode first."

"We've seen this one already. Come on," Dave says. He hold out his hand for her to grab on, and she sees him the way she did the first time, when he arrived at the BAU and shook everyone's hand and had taupe walls in his office. But this time, she's not apprehensive about him, she's apprehensive about everything _but_ him.

"You'll be a wonderful dad," Emily tells him as she lets him hold her up. "You remember all the House Hunters we've watched."

"Emily, you are crazy and I love you," he says. Not _but_ , but _and_. "Now let's have a baby."

 

*

Dr. Chang is across town, delivering triplets.

"Shit," Dave says, adequately putting into words what Emily couldn't, since she has to grind her teeth against the contractions. "We're not going to beat triplets."

"The first one's supposed to take hours," Emily tells him, so that he won't freak out on her. As long as he doesn't freak out, then there might be a chance that she won't have to freak out either. She closes her eyes and remembers Dave telling the cops in Annapolis how to stay calm and avoid causing mass hysteria. Anthrax suddenly seems like a welcome change of pace.

"How much are you hurting?" asks the resident, who looks about seventeen years old, and Dave stares at him with a horrified look that says, _Seriously? I have to leave the welfare of my wife and child in the hands of this moron?_ "On a scale of 1 to 10."

"What's 1 and what's 10?" Emily grits out as she kneels on the half-raised bed and leans her weight against its back. She doesn't like that she can't see Dave, but it's the only position she finds comfortable, and anyway, his hands on her, trying to knead the pain away, and it makes her feel safe.

"Um, it varies from person to person? Let me check how far you are along. You've been in labor for how long?"

Two House Hunters, half a House Hunters International, and the time it took to drive here, was what Emily would have said, but Dave estimates it to be about an hour and forty-five minutes, maybe two hours tops.

The resident's reaction is enthusiastic, but not encouraging. "Whoa, there, you're already at seven centimeters. In under three hours! You sure you haven't done this before?"

 

*

On a scale of 1 to 10, Emily decides through the haze of pain that is known as _motherfucking transition_ , with 1 being a paper cut, 10 being burned alive, 6 being hit by a truck, and 8 being beaten up by the hebephile leader of a religious cult in a bunker rigged with illegal firearms, she would put childbirth at 7.

"My pain scale is totally fucked up," she says apologetically. She doesn't know why she's apologizing, or what she's apologizing for. Maybe for making Dave see her in so much pain. He was a wreck after Schrader and that car accident, and this is even worse. There is blood and mucus and sweat and _it was all her idea_.

"You're doing great, Em," he tells her, wiping her brow with his handkerchief. It's pale blue and monogrammed with his initials, soaked through with her sweat and his.

"I'm thirsty," she says to no one in particular. "You know what would be great right now? A popsicle. Or a root beer float."

"I will get you anything you want, I promise. I just need you to hang in there a little longer."

She wants her team.

She wants her mother.

She wants this to be over and she wants her baby to be here now because she can feel her daughter caught between one world and the next and Emily doesn't like the idea of that.

"Emily," the doctor is saying. He looks older now. Maybe twenty-one. "Emily, we need to get you onto your side, all right? You're progressing too quickly and we need to slow down your labor."

"That doesn't even make sense," she hears Dave snapping. "Why would you want to slow it down? I thought the idea was to get the baby out of her."

"She's already pushing, and she's not ready for it," the doctor says, and follows with the words which, along with "famine" and "cancer" and "let's just be friends", nobody ever really wants to hear. "If she keeps going like this, she'll tear."

"Jesus fucking Christ," Emily hears herself saying, but she rolls onto her side and does as she is told. Dave has his arm around her and his face buried in the nape of her neck. For a moment it's like they are spooning in bed the way they do on lazy Sunday mornings and she almost forgets that it's not a Sunday morning, that instead she is in the middle of a Stephen King novel and her entire body is bearing down and making her push.

"No, Emily, don't push yet."

"I have to," she says. She makes a grab for his hand, squeezes it. "Rossi, I have to."

"I know," he says, leaning down to kiss her.

"No, Emily! Not yet!"

"Oh my god," Emily snaps, jerking up so suddenly she almost gives her husband a bloody nose, "stop telling me what I can and can't do!"

And then she pushes because she can and she has to and she can hear Dave making a sound that is half-laugh and half-sob and he is choking out, "My god, Emily Prentiss, you are fucking _badass_."

It makes her laugh as well, even though laughing hurts, everything hurts, and she remembers something important that only Dave knows the answer to. "Which house did they choose?"

"What house?" Dave asks.

"Costa Rica."

"Oh. The first one. With the view of the village. It's got a slope in the backyard with no fence and they have twin toddlers. Fantastic choice, they made. I can't recommend it enough."

The doctor looks at them like they're both out of their fucking minds, but the nurse nods like she gets it. Her hands are firm but gentle and when she says, "One last push, sweetheart," Emily believes her.

Dave is looking at her like she's the bravest person in the world, and Emily might be delirious with pain but she is certain that nobody has ever looked at her like that before, nobody has ever loved her that much, and suddenly it doesn't seem so scary --- nothing seems scary at all, not death, not birth, not even the pain that sears through her as the baby slips out of her body and into the world or the seriously pissed-off scream that follows, and certainly not when Dave hands her the bundle of red-faced fury that is their daughter.

"Hey," he says, grinning so hard it has to hurt. "Look what we did."

"Look what we did," Emily says, laughing as she clasps the slimy, wriggly creature to her chest like she's worth her weight in gold, not having the first clue about what she's doing, but she's not so scared, not here, not anymore, not with Dave beside her.


End file.
